nexpensive testing systems and to provide insurance points for testing so that analysis can be carried out by emergency departments.Medical products are an integral and pivotal part of health care delivery. They need to be available, affordable and quality-assured. The SADC region is prone to threats arising from the availability and use of substandard and falsified (SF) medical products. This is something that needs to be actively addressed.
A survey, constructed around four themes, was carried out between September 2018 and January 2019. The National Medicines Regulatory Authorities (NMRAs) of the 16 Member States within the SADC regionwere asked to respond to the survey questionnaire. The objective was to map existing fameworks, mechanismsand approaches to prevention, detection and response (PDR) toSF medical products.
Responses were received from twelve out of the sixteen NMRAs. Only three of the twelve respondents had included elements for PDR for SF medical products in their national medicine policies. Regardless of the status in terms of policies, legislation is however in place for the majority of NMRAs. The mandate for reguengthening to ensure a holistic approach across 12 action areas recommended by WHO.
Though findings point to some deficiencies in terms of policies and implementation plans, the majority of countries have the mandate and legislation to deal with substandard and falsified medical products. Effective enforcement requires more investments into human resources, infrastructure, stakeholder coordination and public outreach. WHO has an important source of actionable information about incidience of substandard and falsified medical products. It needs to be leveraged to improve outreach to stakeholders and to raise awareness about SF problem and mechanisms available to address it. The extent, to which mechanisms and procedures are in place, varies. Some elements of the desired approach exist in the region; however, they will benefit from targeted strengthening to ensure a holistic approach across 12 action areas recommended by WHO.During disease outbreaks, the pharmaceutical industry generally puts a lot of effort into promoting clinical trials studying their new drugs. We review evidence of the ten most recent reports on remdesivir. We conclude that it is far too premature to identify remdesivir as a curative or life-saving intervention during the COVID-19 pandemic.Funding and gifts from the pharmaceutical industry have an influence on the decisions made by physicians and medical experts. In the context of the coronavirus disease 2019 epidemic, several treatments are available to treat patients infected with the virus. Some are protected by patents, such as remdesivir, others0020stare not, such as hydroxychloroquine. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/pp1.html We wanted to observe the possible correlation between the fact, for an academic doctor in infectious diseases, of having benefited from funding by Gilead Sciences, producer of remdesivir, and the public positions taken by this doctor towards hydroxychloroquine. Our results show a correlation (Spearman test, p = 0.017) between the amount received from the Gilead Sciences company and public opposition to the use of hydroxychloroquine in France. This should open up the debate on the role of the interest links of doctors with pharmaceutical companies in the medical and scientific public debate.In the context of the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, we conducted a meta-analysis on the effects of chloroquine derivatives in patients, based on unpublished and published reports available publicly on the internet as of 27 May 2020. The keywords 'hydroxychloroquine', 'chloroquine', 'coronavirus', 'COVID-19' and 'SARS-Cov-2' were used in the PubMed, Google Scholar and Google search engines without any restrictions as to date or language. Twenty studies were identified involving 105 040 patients (19 270 treated patients) from nine countries (Brazil, China, France, Iran, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Spain and the USA). Big data observational studies were associated with conflict of interest, lack of treatment dosage and duration, and absence of favourable outcome. Clinical studies were associated with favourable outcomes and details on therapy. Among clinical studies, three of four randomized controlled trials reported a significant favourable effect. Among clinical studies, a significant favourable summary effect was observed for duration of cough (OR 0.19, p 0.00003), duration of fever (OR 0.11, p 0.039), clinical cure (OR 0.21, p 0.0495), death (OR 0.32, p 4.1 × 10-6) and viral shedding (OR 0.43, p 0.031). A trend for a favourable effect was noted for the outcome 'death and/or intensive care unit transfer' (OR 0.29, p 0.069) with a point estimate remarkably similar to that observed for death (?0.3). In conclusion, a meta-analysis of publicly available clinical reports demonstrates that chloroquine derivatives are effective to improve clinical and virological outcomes, but, more importantly, they reduce mortality by a factor of 3 in patients with COVID-19. Big data are lacking basic treatment definitions and are linked to conflict of interest. The retraction of the only big data study associated with a significantly deleterious effect the day after (June 5, 2020) the acceptance of the present work (June 4, 2020) confirms the relevance of this work.The optimal time-response window for photobiomodulation therapy (PBMT) using low-level laser therapy (LLLT) and/or light emitting diodes therapy (LEDT) combined with static magnetic fields (sMF) before physical activity still was not fully investigated. The aim of the present study was to investigate the better of four time-response windows for PBMT combined with sMF (PBMT-sMF) use before exercise in humans.
A prospectively registered, randomized, triple-blinded (volunteers, therapists and assessors) placebo-controlled trial was carried out. Sixty healthy untrained male subjects were randomly allocated to six experimental groups (?=?10 per group) PBMT-sMF 5 mins, PBMT-sMF 3?h, PBMT-sMF 6?h, PBMT-sMF 1-day, placebo, and control. The control group performed all procedures, however did not receive any kind of intervention. PBMT-sMF active or PBMT-sMF placebo was applied precisely in different time points after baseline MVC test to ensure that both MVC tests and eccentric exercise protocol would occur at the same hour of the day in all groups.